


Before and After

by odoridango



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Freshman Year Sads, Loneliness, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 00:30:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3830500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The winter break of their first year of college, Eren and Jean go back to Eren’s apartment together after dinner, but things don’t seem quite right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before and After

**Author's Note:**

> For erejean week day 2: winter. I liked a lot of the fills for erejean week, so they should be going up en masse soon. This one's got the same brand of melancholy as Morning Blues.

“Come on,” Eren said, flushed under the thick wool of his red scarf, a fluffy number that seemed similar to the one Mikasa had worn all year round in high school. Perhaps she had given this one to him for a present.

Jean followed him in silence, and the wooden steps leading to the third floor creaked uneasily under his weight as he walked up. The apartments suited Eren, with the sloppily painted, banana yellow stairs, banisters and rails, burnt orange doors, and slightly rusted brass fixtures. Jean almost expected him to be in room 420, had said as much at dinner, and Eren had laughed so hard his sandwich almost went down the other pipe.

“I’m in Suite 330,” he had said instead, wiping away the remnants of chipotle mayo on his fingers.

“Like your birthday,” Jean noted, before taking a swig of his drink. He was a sucker for ciders, and this one went well with the hickory rub on his sandwich.

Eren stared at him, tucking the soiled napkin in his palm. “…I didn’t think you’d remember that,” he admitted, stuffing the napkin into the empty paper bag sitting between them on the park bench.

Jean frowned, reached over to nudge his shoulder. “Hey. It’s only been a couple months.”

Eren just smiled. Weird smile. Mouth crunched up in a corner, no teeth, no menace. Completely unlike him.

“Heard you were living on your own now,” Jean said, turning back to his cider. As transparent as Eren was, he was also a stubborn fucker and if Eren didn’t want to say anything Jean probably wouldn’t be able to pry it out of him.

“Yeah,” Eren sighed, swiping his hair back from his forehead. He looked tired. “Yeah, I’m living by myself now.”

“Mikasa call?”

Eren let out a soft chuckle. “Only every day.”

On an unspoken cue they started to pack away the dirty wrappers and empty sauce packets, and fat white flakes falling all around them as they looked for a trash can. Jean was grateful for the combat boots he’d found in a military surplus store in the town over from his college.

They stood toe to toe, face to face. Eren was still just a little shorter than Jean, just like in high school. What a change. College. High school. In truth, it had only been six months. Armin was halfway across the nation and didn’t come home until next week. Mikasa was busy with the last of her finals, die to come home in two days, and Marco was already on the way back, having decided to drive back.

Jean shuffled his feet, opened his mouth to say goodbye.

“Wanna come back to my place?” Eren asked him, but unlike six months ago, there was no sense of expectation, no offer of Mario Kart ass-kicking or ridiculously chewy chocolate chip cookies. He just seemed tired. The question seemed to come from a place of defeat.

“Okay,” Jean said, partially because he had nothing better to do, and partially because he didn’t want Eren to go back by himself.

So he watched Eren wrestle with the lock, carefully jiggling the key this way and that, before the door jumped open with a short click. Fluorescent light poured sickly over the entryway and washed out Eren’s colors as he shook the dusting of snow off his shoulders and toed off his boots. As he turned to direct Jean to the coat closet, he seemed sallow, almost jaundiced, and Jean was suddenly relieved that he’d decided to come back with Eren. Six months, Jean had said; they had had the summer but Eren and Mikasa had been living with Armin before that as their family matters were being sorted out, and after graduation they’d been shipped off to live with Eren’s mother. Jean wondered why Eren had decided to return at all. There were other cities to live in, close enough for a ten to twenty minute drive, or a half hour bus ride.

“Want anything to drink?” Eren asked, swept the both of them into the bare-bones living room and conjoined kitchen. Just a ratty looking, beaten, fold-up futon couch and a couple bean bags, a collapsible desk standing in for a coffee table. Jean recognized most of it from Eren’s old rooms, in his father’ house, and in the basement room at Armin’s.

Eren rummaged in the cupboard, dug out a couple Nestle cocoa packs. Jean had never seen him use them before, could only ever recall watching Eren and Mikasa carefully shaking dark chocolate flakes into cautiously heated milk, adding in some cinnamon the way they liked it. Contrast—milk poured into two clay mugs, each microwaved for two minutes; rip open packets, pour, stir. One, two shakes of cinnamon in one cup.

Eren grimaced a little as he drank his own, but Jean didn’t think it was that bad. Nowhere as creamy and rich as Eren and Mikasa used to make it, but looking out the window at the slowly thickening snowdrift, he felt plenty warm inside.

“How are you,” Jean said stiffly. Eren hadn’t updated Facebook since April, and had never had a Twitter or Instagram. They hadn’t talked face to face since graduation, and anything sent to Eren’s email had seemingly gone into the void. Mikasa and Armin were the only ones who seemed to know what was going on at all, but Mikasa was spending summer with her mother’s relatives whole continents away, and Armin divulged very little, so Jean had learned not to ask.

Maybe there hadn’t been much to say. Maybe Eren wouldn’t say anything.

“Okay,” Eren replied, and his entire body seemed to sigh and shrink as he crouched and sank into a bean bag on his side, setting his hot chocolate on the ground. He didn’t seem like he wanted to drink it at all, didn’t seem like he even wanted to talk. Jean would have felt a bit hurt, but it was snowing and Eren was studying his face quietly.

Jean moved to sit in the bean bag next to him. He couldn’t look at Eren’s face, the stillness and listlessness there, so he looked out the sole window, and groped for Eren’s hand self consciously as his cheeks flushed.

It was easy to interlace their fingers, to trace gentle patterns on the back of Eren’s hand with a thumb. Eren said nothing, no protest, no quip, lay slumped with his back to the light with his hand gripping Jean’s like a lifeline.

“…how are you really,” Jean asked again, recalling the gleaming, jagged edge of a broken plate in the kitchen garbage can.

Eren, filed and worn down, looked up from his inspection of Jean’s fingers, and smiled. No teeth. No menace. Small smile, backlit and sharp, like a black and white photograph, like ruined negatives.

“I’m okay,” he said, and didn’t touch his chocolate.


End file.
